Monday, February 04, 2013

Friends of FraudNew Krugman on Republican efforts to obstruct or neuter the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

How can the G.O.P. be so determined to make America safe for financial fraud, with the 2008 crisis still so fresh in our memory? In part it’s because Republicans are deep in denial about what actually happened to our financial system and economy. On the right, it’s now complete orthodoxy that do-gooder liberals, especially former Representative Barney Frank, somehow caused the financial disaster by forcing helpless bankers to lend to Those People.

In reality, this is a nonsense story that has been extensively refuted; I’ve always been struck in particular by the notion that a Congressional Democrat, holding office at a time when Republicans ruled the House with an iron first, somehow had the mystical power to distort our whole banking system. But it’s a story conservatives much prefer to the awkward reality that their faith in the perfection of free markets was proved false.

And

But let’s try not to let this one fall through the cracks: just four years after runaway bankers brought the world economy to its knees, Senate Republicans are using every means at their disposal, violating all the usual norms of politics in the process, in an attempt to give the bankers a chance to do it all over again.

Right. The amount of money loaned out in the program Krugman says is the GOP whipping boy for the financial crisis is only a fraction of the loans that ended up as the toxic waste CDOs that actually brought down Wall Street. It's an impossible scenario from the get-go. Just not enough money to do what the Republicans say it did.

But no matter; this is only part of a much bigger picture. They're doing this all over the place these days, blatantly denying reality, crafting ludicrous alternate realities which they then push aggressively, and freaking out and getting in your face when you call them on their bullshit. It's as though the asshole jock who bullied you in middle school had become a major sector of the establishment.

It's becoming clearer and clearer that we ought to do with the GOP what you should do with a bully: take him out in front of his girlfriend with a really devastating punch to the face. You know, broken nose, blood, maybe some pansy-ass crying. That ought to do it. Alas, the news media and the Democrats are such big pussies, this isn't likely to happen. The bully will continue to lord over us simply because we let them.